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The author Sonja D.  Schmid is an assistant professor at Virgina Tech. She specializes in the history of technology, science and technology policy, and social studies of risk. In respect to emergency response, Schmid has studied how agencies and personnel responded to nuclear disasters in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Schmid has written many articles in regard to emergency response and nuclear disasters her most recent being: Schmid, Sonja D. "What If There's a next Time? Preparedness after Chernobyl and Fukushima - A European-American Response." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. N.p., 01 July 2016. Web. 05 Sept. 2015

Emergency response is one of the main ideas of this article. Schmid expresses the importance of emergency response to nuclear disaster in that prevention can only go so far and in the specific case of nuclear disaster the cause is often unpredictable and unavoidable (natural cause ie. Hurricanes, tsunami). Without an appropriate emergency response system in place nuclear disasters will continue to cause significant environmental damages, infrastructure damages, and harm citizens. 

One of the main arguments of this article is that there is a large focus on nuclear safety but instead there should be a focus on emergency preparedness for when there are nuclear disasters. Schmid argues that safety and preparedness needs to take a higher priority than keeping industry secrets. Individual nuclear industries should to an extent be sharing reactor designs so in the event of an emergency responding agencies know the equipment they will be facing. 

Schmid used various other books, research articles, and industry reports to write this article. Her research history of nuclear industry in Eastern Europe and Russia helped to strengthen the claims she made. 

Sonja D. Schmid is an assistant professor at Virginia Tech. Her area of expertise is in the history of technology, science and technology policy, and social studies of risk. Specifically, Schmid researches the history and the organization of nuclear industries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. With respect to emergency response, Schmid has studied how agencies and personel have responded to nuclear disasters.

A recent article Schmid has written: Schmid, Sonja D. "What If There's a next Time? Preparedness after Chernobyl and Fukushima - A European-American Response." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. N.p., 01 July 2016. Web. 05 Sept. 2016.

 “safety sometimes gets pitted against profitability”

“Consequently, we see a trend where mitigating the consequences of a nuclear disaster is also increasingly being regarded as an international task.”

“We need to create a credible organization-one that combines the legitimacy of the United Nations agency and the executive vigor of an industry group.”

In addition to this article I looked further into the Chirnoble disaster, the IAEA policies, and where there are nuclear plants in the United States. 

One way Schmid supports her argument of unification through her discussion and presentation of data from nuclear organizations that single countries have attempted to establish but could not take authority because the practices of nuclear science were still in question. Schmid also discusses that in order to allow proper emergency response individual companies need to share the types of reactors they are using so responders understand the equipment they will have to deal with. Lastly Schmid discusses how nuclear response needs to be more of an international because when a nuclear disaster does strike it is not just the nation in ownership of the nuclear facility that is affected.

The article’s bibliography is quite long and includes a variety of sources, this suggests the author researched this topic in detail and thoroughly. 

The main argument of this article is that there needs to be more of a focus on emergency response to nuclear disasters and less directed toward nuclear safety and that safety/emergency response should take a higher priority than company trademarks. She claims that nuclear emergency response should be more of an international response and less of a single nation response.